Citing slow adoption of IPTV by small telcos, SES Americom Inc. today announced that it’s shutting down its IP PRIME service in North America by July 31, 2009.
The latest news in the long and turbulent history of the much-marketed offering comes but one month after SES COO Jim Ducay confirmed for xchangemag.com that it had ceased selling the service as a fully managed, turnkey IPTV service to telcos, preferring instead to focus on its MPEG-2 upgrade package.
SES found the original game plan, hatched at the TelcoTV show in 2005, to require too much heavy lifting beyond its core competency of content delivery and gradually shifted the management and systems integration components to partners such as Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO).
“There was a shift in strategy,” admitted Jim Ducay, chief operating officer for SES Americom, at last month’s TelcoTV show. “Operators today can take our signal and content and work with others to take things the rest of the way. There’s still a need for a managed service, but we don’t need to do it all.”
SES did sign up telcos for IP-PRIME, but not enough. “With a subscriber base of less than 10,000 at the end of November and after more than two years of service, the consumer uptake is insufficient to justify continuing operations,” said Rob Bednarek, president and CEO of SES AMERICOM-NEW SKIES, in prepared comments.
The IP-PRIME service will continue to operate until July 31, 2009, according to SES. This will offer telecom operators “an opportunity to orderly transfer their services and SES AMERICOM, in collaboration with third parties involved in the service, to seek the best option to transition the business. “
SES says that the termination of IP-PRIME will not materially affect its financial guidance for 2008 and 2009 related to revenue and EBITDA.
